National News

Alabama Grants Scottsboro Boys Posthumous Pardons

by Evann Gastaldo, Newser Staff

(NEWSER) – Eighty-two years after they were falsely accused of raping two white women, all of the "Scottsboro Boys" have been pardoned. Alabama's Board of Pardons and Paroles pardoned the last three today after a unanimous vote, the Montgomery Advertiser reports. Nine black teens were accused of the rapes in 1931; by 1937, Haywood Patterson, Charlie Weems, Andy Wright, and Clarence Norris had all been convicted of rape. The other five saw their charges dropped, and Norris was pardoned in 1976 because, the AP reports, he was the only one known to be alive at the time; Patterson, Weems, and Wright received full and unconditional pardons today.